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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Tenchusatsu who wrote (1392713)	2/26/2023 2:40:20 AM
From: Broken_Clock	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1571040

essentially it is over The calls for a settlement are coming from NATO now theglobeandmail.com A negotiated settlement is the only path to peace in Ukraine Today A negotiated settlement is the only path to peace in Ukraine Cesar Jaramillo Contributed to The Globe and Mail Published 1 minute ago This content is available to globeandmail.com subscribers.... and.... Peace means calling for a negotiated settlement in Ukraine While our leaders want to fight a proxy war against Russia to the last Ukrainian, the masses in the West must take to the streets and demand an end to this appalling conflict, writes ANDREW MURRAY ONE year ago Russian President Putin ordered a massive land invasion of Ukraine, escalating the conflict which had started eight years earlier with the Nato-nationalist coup against the country’s elected president Viktor Yanukovych in Kiev. During the last year, the likeliest estimate of military casualties on both sides is around 300,000. Civilian casualties are running at around 20,000, with more than 7,000 dead. Millions have been made refugees and the destruction across Ukraine has been immense, computed in billions of dollars. A small minority in the anti-war movement, and a few of this paper’s readers, find all this a price worth paying for oligarchic Russia standing up to Nato’s eastward expansion. It is a hard argument to make in my view. Nevertheless, it is true that global opposition to the realities of US hegemony means that most of the world has refrained from criticising Russia, or from joining in Nato’s economic sanctions, which have caused a whole other level of misery without bringing the conflict any nearer an end. What that global majority wants is peace. And a year in, it is surely time for serious negotiations to open towards that end. That case is now being made in surprising places, like the ultra-conservative Wall Street Journal, one of Rupert Murdoch’s media properties. Right-wing columnist Gerard Baker, the former editor of that paper, wrote this week: “Nobody wants to talk about territorial concessions, but Russia isn’t going to surrender Crimea or, it seems, most of the Donbass, where historically pro-Russian populations lend a patina of legitimacy to some of Moscow’s claims. “Some kind of conditional — perhaps deliberately ambiguous — territorial deal, or at least a truce along acceptable front lines, will be needed. It’s a messy solution that falls short of Mr Zelensky’s aims but is better than years of war.” Baker is only talking sense. Even the liberal, imperialist Economist magazine has acknowledged that Ukraine will end up fighting to “liberate people who do not want to be liberated.” These are the millions who would likely really be happiest in the Soviet Union, but since that choice isn’t available, would prefer rule by Moscow to nationalist Kiev. Peace talks now would require a recognition of two things — first, neither side can attain their maximum objectives militarily, at least without endless years of conflict; and second, they have both already lost something. Putin’s attempt to destroy the Ukrainian state, or at least effect regime change there, has failed. His attempt to keep Ukraine out of Washington’s strategic clutches has also foundered — as Ukraine’s Defence Minister has noted, the country is now already de facto a Nato member. That is far from being desirable, but it is in large part a consequence of Putin’s political misjudgements. Even if Ukraine does not formally join Nato — and it shouldn’t — it is unlikely to detach its security from its present reliance on Nato arms, intelligence and training any time soon. On the other hand, Ukraine has irrevocably lost Crimea and most of the Donbass. Soviet-era borders that could and should have been peacefully renegotiated at the time of the USSR’s dissolution — and not only between Russia and Ukraine — in line with national realities, will have to be realigned. Yet we do not hear a whisper of these perspectives in Westminster. Bipartisan backing for a war to the bitter end is the only opinion allowed to be heard. If Rishi Sunak displays even the most muted reservations about pouring arms into Ukraine, his two predecessors in Downing Street leap on his back, breathing bellicosity. As for what parliamentary convention dubs the “opposition,” Labour under Keir Starmer treats the slaughter in Ukraine as just another box to be ticked, all the better to establish his embrace of the Establishment’s outlook and the fact that he is not Jeremy Corbyn. Nato and war join his support for big business and Israel as the issues on which no difference of view is really permitted in today’s Labour Party. There is no reason to believe Starmer cares very much about Ukraine, any more than about any other issue on which he changes his public position promiscuously — the war exists solely as an opportunity to distance himself from the left and Labour’s better traditions. Those traditions have been silenced by Starmer’s edict in this conflict. The withdrawal of the whip and consequent likely loss of employment hangs as a threat over the head of any Labour MP who may believe the course of continuing conflict set in Ukraine could be improved upon. Unless, of course, they believe the “improvement” required is still more weaponry and stronger support for Nato’s policy, as a few seem to misguidedly believe. So parliamentary Britain is sleepwalking into escalating war with hardly a peep of dissent. Yet popular Britain seems resistant to the Westminster war psychosis: people want a democratic peace that brings an end to the war on grounds that respect the self-determination of both Ukraine and its minority peoples. That is the only peace that would have any chance of lasting. A settlement imposed by Nato imperialism in its own interests could only constitute a pause before renewed hostilities. Security has to work for everyone — or it works for nobody. Perhaps an impending Chinese peace initiative, if it emerges, may move things along. In the meantime, the development of mass pressure outside Parliament is the only way to advance the cause of peace. That was true 20 years ago, too. Both front benches committed to Tony Blair’s Iraq invasion, although backbench dissent was rampant. It was the anti-war movement that spoke for the majority — and was, let it be recalled, correct on every point it made about the impending war in the Middle East. The demonstration this Saturday called by Stop the War and CND to demand peace talks will not be two-million strong alas. But it is as important as any the anti-war movement has ever organised. Only the streets can speak for peace today. The parliamentary silence is the silence of the tomb, perhaps literally so. I hope all Star readers will join us on Saturday.